(PAST IMPERFECT)

Girl Scout Camping in the Boondocks

This weekend Kennedy and I went camping with her Girl Scout troop and all the fathers, a father-daughter adventure in the Cascade mountains.

We stayed at a fire training camp, which made the whole thing feel surreal. Everywhere you look there were life-size mock ups of typical fire fighting challenges, including a four story concrete building covered in black soot, an overturned tractor trailer tanker truck (pictured below), a railway tank car, and dozens upon dozens of towering stacks of wooden pallets to set ablaze.

Kennedy and I arrived at the camp first and found it deserted. I kept thinking: this can’t be right. But I was wrong. This was exactly where we were supposed to be. The girls slept on a gigantic mattress, like the ones pole vaulters use to land on. Not sure if this is bona fide fire fighting equipment, but somehow Kennedy managed to slip off it in the middle of the night. She was unharmed.

There was much girl bonding going on.

The fathers were excellent cooks.

There was no snow this weekend so we had to improvise our Saturday afternoon activities. We tried geocaching, which involves all of the father’s standing around intently staring into little hand held devices as their daughters complain.